At other times, he savors the “sweet taste of sin” in songs like “Sobredosis” when he speaks of his “addiction” to his lover as “the most divine sin.”Īlternatively, Santos intuits that his attraction to his beloved, as in the song “Inmortal,” is on a trajectory toward the infinite.
He tells the woman, “you and I are no different” from them. “We’re not supposed to be doing this,” Santos whispers to his adulterous lover in the intro to “Los Infieles.” “This is a sin.” He gives in to temptation, pleading God to forgive them, and remembers how Adam and Eve fell into temptation. Since his days writing for Aventura, his lyrics have been rife with confessions of how his romantic ventures lead him into temptation and sin. “There are so many things.I don’t know whether I’m good or bad,” he states, questioning whether God is disappointed with his sexual libertinism.
1,” he converses with a priest (played by comedian George Lopez) inside the confessional.
In one moment his feelings rise toward ecstatic devotion to the opposite sex, and in others, toward abysmal, even diabolical, agony. Contrary to the lyrics of more saccharine bachateros like his peer Prince Royce, Santos’ experience of eros is tainted by the uncontrollable hold he feels that women have over him. The tension inherent to human desire that Santos sings of so eloquently helped me understand the nuance and complexity of my own desire, and what it had to do with Christ.įor Romeo, who borrows his stage name from Shakespeare’s archetypal lover, the desire for women is hardly a benevolent force that ends in an idyllic “happily ever after” scene. This reflects the Catholic understanding of desire as ordered toward the infinite, but also distorted by original sin. Santos’ music speaks of how the desire for love is embedded in the tension between ecstatic, supernatural joy and darkness, destruction. Though I didn’t realize it then, his music would accompany me through my journey into the Catholic Church. I first discovered Romeo’s music ten years ago when someone in the dorm room next to mine started playing one of his first solo singles. Though Santos does not speak much about his personal faith, he uses religious imagery that borrows from the Catholic imagination of his youth. Though Santos does not speak much about his personal faith, he uses religious imagery that borrows from the Catholic imagination of his youth, exploring the paradoxical nature of the human desire for love. Thematically, the music he has written-both his solo work and with Aventura-continues in the tradition of heartbroken, love-sick bachata artists that precede him, but with more of an edge. Santos has made a name for himself with his high-pitched falsetto, which lends a sense of vulnerability to his songs. 1,” was successful both commercially and with critics. The band blended bachata-a bluesy guitar-driven style of dance music born in the Dominican countryside-with R&B, hip hop and rock, the sounds they heard playing on street corners in the Bronx.Īfter reaching international fame with their hit “Obsesión” and selling out Madison Square Garden, the band went on hiatus in 2011, giving Romeo a chance to work on his solo career. In 1994, he and his cousin Henry Santos formed the band Los Tinellers with brothers Lenny and Max Santos (no relation to Anthony and Henry), which in 1996 became Aventura. Though he initially joined the choir to meet girls, he quickly discovered he had a gift for singing. Born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican mother and Dominican father, Anthony Santos, who goes by Romeo on stage, first started singing in the choir at his family’s Catholic church.
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